NANCY: Who are some of the dancers you've seen who are not your company members, over your years of watching dance, who were risk-takers?
MERCE: Frédéric Gafner.
NANCY: What makes a technically good danceer? What do you look for in a dancer when you're finding dancers for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company?
MERCE: Well, the first thing is if they can stand up, it's important. Then how...your eye...if my eye in class goes to somebody whom I haven't seen before because it's someone...and I don't... Well, I'll give you an example. The company...we came back from a tour in September, and I came here and there was a class--I think it was an elementary class--going on in the big studio. And I looked in and there were about twenty people. It was a fairly large class there. There was this one young man back there who anybody would have spotted, and I did immediately. And I looked for about three seconds, turned around to Mary [Lisa] and said, "Who is that?" And she said, well, he's new. I said give him a scholarship. It was Frédéric Gafner
NANCY: Frédéric Gafner who went on to dance in your company.
MERCE: Yes, but...well, he is a remarkable dancer. And he was in the elementary class. Well, he soon got out of that.
NANCY: He had already, I think, won some major ballet prize by then.
MERCE: He was a soloist in Stuttgart Ballet.